Links
The Truth Behind The Amazon Mystery Seeds – An excellent investigative journalism piece from The Atlantic that brings to mind Occam’s Razor (the simplest explanation tends to be the right one).
Side Note: I learned about Occam’s Razor from the 1997 movie Contact (based on Carl Sagan’s novel). Here’s the scene with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey.
If you watch this Ken Burns documentary on Ernest Hemingway, you will see the writer’s works in a different light. I didn’t find it easy to watch and it took me several days to complete, but I’m glad I finished it. This quote by Morgan Housel continued to run through my head, “You shouldn’t be shocked when people who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you don’t like.”
A dugout canoe was found in the Chattooga river and it may be more than 200 years old. It’s the second one – the first one was found in 2004 and was carbon dated to around 1740.
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Activism
In New York City in 1850, 60% of all deaths were young children, and milk was a primary culprit. We solved this problem initially with chemistry—Louis Pasteur came up with the technique of pasteurization in 1865. But it didn’t become the standard for milk in grocery stores in the United States until 1915—fifty years after Pasteur made his breakthrough. And that’s because it required a whole generation of activists and legal reformers getting the idea into circulation that milk should be pasteurized—convincing consumers to buy it, convincing the milk industry to change its practices, passing laws, et cetera.
Next Big Idea Club
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Not The Same
In maths it is a rule that 2 + 2 = 4. In psychology, 2 + 2 can equal more or less than 4. It’s up to you.
Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland
Rory Sutherland planted this seed in my mind, and I continue to think about variations of it. A few examples I’ve come up with:
- If a company does $1M in sales per year and has 1 customer, that is a very different business than a company that does $1M in sales from 1,000 customers. All things being equal, I would argue that the one with just 1 customer is a great deal riskier. On paper, these two companies might be valued the same. In reality, they shouldn’t be.
- 5 x 5 is the same as 25 x 1, right? 5 days of running 5 miles per day is a good week of training. Whereas running 25 miles at one time is almost a marathon. The same number of miles have been covered, but it’s not the same experience at all.
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Roll On
One of my favorite sports books is Finding Ultra by Rich Roll. If I read a few pages of this book before falling asleep, it makes me want to get out of bed and go on a late night run. This is a great story about an athlete who climbs to the top of the endurance world after the age of 40.
Here’s a bit of motivation from the book:
If my story stands for anything, it is that the human body, mind, and spirit are far more resilient than you can possibly imagine. My testimony is that each and every one of us is sitting atop vast reservoirs of untapped potential. We’re all capable of feats beyond our limited imagination. And personal growth isn’t just possible, it’s our mandate. To echo Thoreau, we need not lead lives of quiet desperation. You too can break the chains of enslavement to take control of your health and destiny. You too can be better, do more, consume less, thrive. And along the way, achieve things beyond your imagination. It’s never too late to change. You only have to do one thing: decide.
Finding Ultra, Revised and Updated Edition: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World’s Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself by Rich Roll
Here’s a quote from the book about training…
Proficiency in endurance sports, explained Chris, is all about building the efficiency of the aerobic, “go all day” system. To accomplish this, I needed to focus on training that system specifically—which meant staying in the second of five specific training “zones” that are established by the lactate test. For a guy like me, that meant slowing down. Way down. No more gut-busting trail runs. Forget about battling my buddies up the Santa Monica Mountains on the bike. From that minute forward, I was to never escalate my heart rate above 140 beats per minute on any run. And on the bike? Cap it at 130. Zone Two. All day. Every day.
Finding Ultra, Revised and Updated Edition: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World’s Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself by Rich Roll
Deep Dive: Here’s Roll talking in detail about training on the No Meat Athlete podcast.
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11 Lives
And remember—you don’t only live once. One day you will be dead, but it takes about seven years to master something. If you live to be 88, after age 11, you have 11 opportunities to be great at something. Most people never let themselves die and cling onto that one life. But you can spend a life building things, another life writing poems, and another life looking for facts. You have many lives. Each of them is an opportunity to try something new and increase your optionality. Live them.
Nesslabs
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Travel
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
Mark Twain
(H/T Joe Kesler via the Humble Dollar)
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Sisu
To the Finnish people, sisu has a mystical, almost magical meaning. Sisu is a unique Finnish concept. It is a Finnish term that can be roughly translated into English as strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity.
Sisu is not momentary courage, but the ability to sustain that courage. It is a word that cannot be fully translated. It defines the Finnish people and their character. It stands for the philosophy that what must be done will be done, regardless of cost.
Sisu is an inherent characteristic of the Finnish people. You might call it backbone, spunk, stamina, guts, or drive and perseverance. It is a measure of integrity that surpasses the hardship and sees through to the end.
Sisu is the quality that lets them pick up, move on, and learn something from previous failures. It’s the hard-jawed integrity that makes them pay their war debts in full. In short, it’s the indomitable will that sets Finns apart and explains many of the incredible things they do.
Finlandia.edu